Thermosensitive transfer recording method is a recording method whereby the ink layer laid on the surface of the substrate film is transferred to the surface of the printing paper by a print head. In this category, since the sublimation thermal transfer method has higher gradation than the fusion thermal transfer method, it has been widely adopted mainly as alternative applications to silver salt picture as an image copy such as video printer, digital camera and digital video.
The sublimation thermal transfer image receiving medium utilizes a plastic sheet, composite sheet of plastic sheet and paper, or synthetic paper. In particular, it is considered that a support of synthetic paper containing voids therein obtained by stretching a polyolefin resin containing inorganic filler powder is preferable due to its opacity and excellent gradation (refer to, for example, JP-S60-245593-A(1985), JP-S61-112693-A(1986), and JP-H8-169186-A(1996)).
Additionally, to obtain high gloss and gradation, several methods are proposed where a thin film surface layer of fine pore layer with the addition of a small amount of inorganic substance or organic crosslinked polymer; or a thin film surface of non-porous layer without the addition of inorganic substance is applied to the surface of the core material layer having an internal lamellar pore layer to act as a support for suppressing surface roughness (refer to, for example, JP-H5-169865-A(1993), JP-H8-183263-A(1996), JP-H7-125453-A(1995), and JP-2000-127303-A). As an alternative application of silver salt picture, it is desired that reflected light is not largely changed by a change in angle for the same color development from any viewing direction. However, there is a problem that reflectance is greatly changed with viewing direction to cause a change of color development for the image receiving medium now being used such as a plastic sheet, composite sheet of plastic sheet and paper, or synthetic paper. To address the problem, although a method for reducing gloss by adding inorganic substance to a surface layer is proposed (refer to, for example, JP-H7-257054-A(1995), there still remains the problem of picture print intensity due to the lowering of gloss.